Animal Psi

EVANGELISTA – ‘In Animal Tongue’
In Animal Tongue, the latest full-length from Evangelista, is now available in stores and online, as Carla Bozulich continues to tour the United States and Canada with John Eichenseer.  The entire album is now streaming on our website.  See below for more information and tour dates.  Evangelista returns with a fourth album, following the critically-acclaimed Prince of Truth (2009) that cemented Carla Bozulich’s reputation for aesthetic quality, intensity and iconoclasm as she entered a third decade of tireless artistic and musical activity. Evangelista’s new album continues to broaden the sonic canvas against which Bozulich deploys her distinctive voice and lyricism. In Animal Tongue reflects Bozulich’s escape from her Los Angeles home base and an increasingly nomadic existence in the last couple of years, devoted in equal parts to collaboration and improvisation with a wide range of players in diverse contexts, the conception and execution of site-specific sound/art events and residencies, rocking the circuit with Evangelista (equally at home in bright museums and dingy clubs) and retreat to the American desert. In Animal Tongue was largely written and recorded by Bozulich, in a variety of locations, driven (in Carla’s words) “by the forces of rocks, evolution, geology, drugs, boxing, everything-ology and dead stuff that makes the dirt and cement and the tress grow. Plus real versus fake!!!” The album steams and bubbles like a simmering cauldron, with carefully metered elements stirred and coagulating around a core of low end provided by Tara Barnes on bass, seasoned with piano, organ and cut-and-paste arrangements by Dominic Cramp. This core trio is augmented by Sam Mickens (The Dead Science), Shahzad Ismaily (Laurie Anderson, Secret Chiefs, Sam Amidon) and John Eichenseer (jhno), who contribute to several tracks. Through it all, Bozulich’s powerfully adventurous voice weaves vital, semi-improvisatory melodies of gasping, restrained intensity (“Artificial Lamb”, “Bells Ring Fire”), brooding incantation (“In Animal Tongue”, “Hands Of Leather”, “Die Alone”) and a rich half-whispered alto (“Black Jesus”, “Enter The Prince”).  Tiny Mix Tapes said the album “ranks among the most provocative work she’s done in recent years.” In Animal Tongue is a superb addition to Bozulich’s canon and as original a voice as can be found at the current nexus of punk, poetry, and experimental music.

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HAZ # 13
8 dibujos en blanco y negro impresos en un A5 desplegable con una cara a color estilo papel de pared.  120 copias.  Gratis.///Issue 13 of HAZ fanzine. 8 b/w drawings printed in a folded A5. Color backside wallpaper style.  120 copies.  Free.

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LIGHT – ‘LIGHT DISCOGRAPHY’
When the black doom duo Light originally released it’s three full-length albums, they were put out in tiny print runs that were only available from a couple of select sources and went out of print almost instantly. I remember seeing them listed over at Aquarius Records on their website and wanted to pick them up based on the amazing things that the guys at AQ were saying about ’em, but by that point they were already sold out. It would be a while before I would finally hear these three albums, but once I did, I was immediately hooked by the strange, blurred-out sound that Light created, completely sucked in to a twilight world via the bands phantasmal bedroom blackdoom. I listed to all three albums over and over, cranking them up and filling the office with the heavy waves of droning amp hiss and plaintive chords and anguished vocalizations, and realizing that this wasn’t quite like anything else I’d heard before. Light’s music obviously had it’s roots entrenched in black metal of the most abject sort, as well as the more extreme variations of doom metal, but there’s a delicate quality to this that strips away the metallic aspects and turns it into something else. The one reference point that seems most apt to me and that I keep jotting down when trying to describe this is that listening to Light is a bit like hearing a kind of stentorian blackdoom misery being filtered through the autumnal chill of Codeine’s The White Birch. If that notion sounds at all appealing to you, then you need to hear this stuff. First released on their own in tiny self-released editions, all three of Light’s full length discs are gathered together here for this new reissue on the Crucial Blaze imprint. The three discs are collected in a dvd-style case with full color artwork, and come with a booklet of abstract photography, an insert card, and a set of four full color 1″ badges. This collection has been released in an edition of two hundred hand-numbered copies.

NEKRASOV – ‘EVER PRESENT’ 2xCD/ARTZINE
That Australian black metal/industrial artist Nekrasov incorporates the aesthetics of harsh noise into his miniature holocausts of hellish speakershred isn’t news to anyone who has been following his body of work over the past few years. From the beginning, Nekrasov’s mechanized black blasts and sprawling abyssal soundscapes have been infested with the most caustic forms of electronic abuse and frequency terror. But starting with the extremely limited disc In Solitude And Darkness, The Last Step Is Made that came out on Void Séance last year, Nekrasov has now also started to work with the rigid aesthetic of the “wall”, sculpting brutal, immersive infernos of extreme static noise that are reminiscent of Vomir. The mindset is certainly similar; going for extremely long unbroken tracks of churning high density distortion that remains unrelenting and unchanging, Nekrasov’s efforts in HNW drag me down into the same sort of depressed, lightless Zen state that the French master is so adept at invoking. This is no small feat.  In Solitude was a successful first effort in the field of HNW from the artist, and now follows that with a new two-disc set called The Ever-Present that we have issued on our Crucial Blaze sub-label. This set offers more massive black walls of rushing static noise, with two half hour long pieces on the first disc, and a single monolithic track on the second disc that stretches out for over an hour. Each of these tracks is formed from varied frequency levels and different approaches to texture, shifting in tone and extremity as the listener moves from one track to the next, but it all flows together rather seamlessly as an exercise in intense, super heavy trance-blast. In addition, deep listening reveals myriad sonic events and nuked drones that swarm deep within the maelstrom of The Ever-Present, and the monolithic “III” in particular ventures into more detailed regions of noise where fragments of grinding rhythmic clank, smoldering static riffs, and howling blackened melodies can be heard buried underneath the roaring inferno.

RECLUSA – ‘ANTI-CONSCIENCE’ CD/ARTZINE
A while back, I was turned on to the band Diseased Oblivion by way of their split with Sewer Goddess, and was impressed with the filthy, fucked-up deathdoom that made up their side of that split. While looking into their other releases, I found out that one of the members of the band also had another project, this one called Reclusa, which had released a bunch of tapes on a variety of tiny underground imprints. I checked out Reclusa, and was floored by how ridiculously heavy and disgusting the music was; it didn’t even sound like metal to me, but inhabited another realm of twisted, abstract heaviness closer to industrial noise, while utilizing massive down tuned riffs and elements of death metal that were left to putrefy into noxious formless slime. Reclusa mixed together filthy sub-Godflesh / (early) Pitch Shifter machine pummel, putrescent guttural vocal-fumes, ultra bleak dark ambience, weird bits of diseased dub, deformed deathdoom, blasts of orchestral terror, & murky industrial noisescapes, and the result is hopeless, terminally nihilistic ugliness that skulks in a dark corner somewhere in between the likes of Black Mayonnaise, The Human Quena Orchestra, Aderlating, and the nastiest strains of underground gorenoise.  Of course, this led to my wanting to get Reclusa on our Crucial Blaze series. And here it is, a new full length disc called The Anticonscience that offers a seventy-seven minute descent into vile, absurdly heavy low-fi mechanized horror from this cult Ohio outfit.  It’s like a doomdeath album being played at half speed while someone splices in Throbbing Gristle and Wolf Eyes. Or what Dead World or early Pitchshifter might have sounded like if they had collaborated with one of the uglier denizens of the Cold Meat label. Either way, Reclusa pulls back thick, heavy curtains of dead flesh to reveal a seething, rotting world of abject horror within these suffocating, oppressive soundscapes. Released in a limited hand-numbered edition of two hundred copies, The Anticonscience comes with a twenty-page chapbook of nightmarish artwork and writing, a vinyl sticker, and 1″ badge.

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Talvihorros – ‘Descent Into Delta’ LP £10/CD £8
250 copies of each. The man behind this one man guitar driven excursion is London based Ben Chatwin.  Despite only recently forming the Talvihorros project in 2008, Chatwin has been experimenting with sound ever since he first picked up a guitar as a teenager. His live performances have seen him share a stage with the likes of Tim Hecker, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and Stephan Mathieu. Chatwin has to this point juggled live performances and studio work as two separate entities but with this album marries the two, sculpting, editing and manipulating 5 live improvisations to create something structured and powerful yet fluid and organic.

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BURIAL HEX – ‘Angelic Gematria’ cassette £5
Brand new full length cassette from Clay Ruby’s amazing Burial Hex project. Cascades of blackened electronics, distant and buried wailing electronics drenched in throbbing rhythms and grumbling thunderous reverberations, swelling across the two 20 minute compositions, steadily building to utter decay. Limited to 100, pro-dubbed with black and white covers printed on parchment paper.

HUSERE GRAV – ‘Untitled’ cassette £5
A desolate and bleak new 30 minutes from Husere Grav, following on from releases on Not Not Fun, Stunned and Small Doses. 8 tracks of stark drifting blackened tones, claustrophobic tension building throughout each untitled track. The opening track opens with a empty repeated riff, shrouded in a thick electric drone and perhaps a drum beat crushed to the very edge of recognition, followed by a piece that engulfs the listener in a plague of blackened sounds working against one another. The sounds continue with static organic zone outs and soundtrack-style compositions. Husere Grav’s newest release showcases a host of influences from dark ambient, black metal and power electronics but unlike the latter genres, never sounds harsh, the sound is just dark, brooding doom. The lack of any information and titles enhance the somewhat mysterious artist behind this excellent bleak sound project. Limited to 100, pro-dubbed with black and white covers printed on parchment paper.

PAINTING PETALS ON PLANET GHOST – ‘Transparent Winter’ LP £12
Transparent Winter follows on from the debut release on the always excellent Time-Lag label and releases on the equally great PSF, Opax and A Silent Place. Painting Petals On Planet Ghost is the trio of Ramona Ponzini with Roberto & Maurizio Opalio (aka My Cat Is An Alien). Here they return for a new full length vinyl release on Blackest Rainbow. PPOPG create some wonderfully fragile and unusual experiments that fall somewhere between folk, psychedelia and drone. Ramono Ponzini sings in Japanese as well as contributing ‘furin, metal and wooden japanese wind chimes’. These are combined with Maurizio Opalio on acoustic guitar, and Roberto Opalio on ‘mini keyboard, bodhran, alientronics, and wordless vocalizations’. The trio’s eclectic setup helps them create some truly luscious and mysterious music that is perfectly fragile, strange, distant and delicate. ‘Mars Appears’ is a hazy dream piece with layered guitars, strange electronics and Ramono’s perfectly delivered Japanese vocals drawing the listener in surrounded by a strange but perfect fitting created by the Opalio brothers musical output. ‘The Mountain’ is equally as otherworldy as the previous sides track, with swirling strings and out of this world electronics created by Roberto and Maurizio. Whilst Ramona’s vocal are almost delivered in a trance like state. A extremely beautiful record with a gorgeous organic feel to it. The record is housed in a sleeve featuring film photographs of flowers. Edition of 250 copies pressed on 140gram virgin vinyl.

AIDAN BAKER – ‘Plague of Fantasies’ LP £12
Brand new solo material from Aidan Baker, one of the most prolific musicians recording at the moment, Aidan creates such a wide array of musical sound its hard to keep track, not only does he perform as part of the fantastic Nadja, as well as in projects such as ARC, and collaborating with other luminaries such as Tim Hecker, he releases a whole host of solo material. This new solo record is really something, pulling together all the genres he works in, fusing heavy drones, with broken drums beats, buried vocals, dreamy ambient manoeuvres, and moments referring to post rock build across the two twenty plus minute tracks on this new recording. Baker’s genre blending somehow builds a sound that somehow sounds delicate and beautiful, but also at times sounds gloomy and melancholy. Plague of Fantasies is a rare vinyl release from Aidan Baker. Pressed on virgin vinyl in an edition of only 300 copies.

TWINSISTERMOON – ‘When Stars Glide Through Solid’ 2xLP £18
Long awaited reissue of the debut release from Mehdi Amezianes Twinsistermoon project, originally released as a gorgeous handmade self released CDR in 2007, to many of Natural Snow Buildings and each of their solo project, this is the pick of all their releases, which is rather ironic being that its one of the smallest release runs in the discography of all the Natural Snow Buildings and related projects, it is infact the most limited release of all the Twinsistermoon releases. But due to the massive level of word of mouth about their releases on blogs and in the smaller press publications this release has become one of those holy grail releases. Unlessof course you have a small wedge of cash lying around doing nothing. So, finally, and with great pleasure, the much talked of reissue is finally here. The record opens with a real stunner, ‘I Wish I Could Drown The World In Reverberation’ is a trance inducing piece, with percussive tambourine, dreamy vocals, and shimmering strings, with a gorgeous organic rich feeling. It’s followed by ‘To Breath Underwater’, a more pastoral folk song, akin to some late 60s/early 70s folk artists. The album as a whole focuses more on the song based material which occasionally venture into the more far out zone outs. The vinyl reissue features an entire side worth of new material, all of which is exclusive to the vinyl edition and is packaged in a beautiful gatefold sleeve featuring stunning new artwork by Solange Gularte. Limited to 600 copies. 200 direct mailorder copies on regular weight coloured vinyl, 400 copies on heavyweight black virgin vinyl.

TWINSISTERMOON – ‘When Stars Glide Through Solid’ CD £9
Long awaited reissue of the debut release from Mehdi Amezianes Twinsistermoon project, originally released as a gorgeous handmade self released CDR in 2007, to many of Natural Snow Buildings and each of their solo project, this is the pick of all their releases, which is rather ironic being that its one of the smallest release runs in the discography of all the Natural Snow Buildings and related projects, it is infact the most limited release of all the Twinsistermoon releases. But due to the massive level of word of mouth about their releases on blogs and in the smaller press publications this release has become one of those holy grail releases. Unlessof course you have a small wedge of cash lying around doing nothing. So, finally, and with great pleasure, the much talked of reissue is finally here. The record opens with a real stunner, ‘I Wish I Could Drown The World In Reverberation’ is a trance inducing piece, with percussive tambourine, dreamy vocals, and shimmering strings, with a gorgeous organic rich feeling. It’s followed by ‘To Breath Underwater’, a more pastoral folk song, akin to some late 60s/early 70s folk artists. The album as a whole focuses more on the song based material which occasionally venture into the more far out zone outs. The CD reissue features an additional bonus track, which is exclusive to the CD edition and is packaged in a beautiful gatefold sleeve featuring stunning new artwork by Solange Gularte. Limited to 500 copies.

CAM DEAS & JACK ALLETT – ‘Outgrowing The Wretched Cradle’ LP £12
A wild new collaboration from long time touring partners and Blackest Rainbow buddies Deas & Allett. The record comprises of two side long pieces both with the same approach in terms of playing; Deas plays guitar pulling together his classical sound and his stunning recent experimental approach from his Quadtych releases while Allett does live manipulations, taking advantage of his long experience as one half of Towering Breaker. Deas and Allett seem to consistently push there work to new levels and sounds, and once again with this record, they do just that, two sounds colliding making something between experimental guitar music, electronica and something on the very fringe of the avant garde. Limited to 300 copies in stunning sleeves.

ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE COSMIC INFERNO – ‘Shakespeare From The Cosmic Inferno 2008’ 2xLP £18.5
Debut release on our new Blackest Bootleg labels releasing live recordings. The bootleg was recorded back in August 2008 at The Shakespeare in Sheffield, a great venue that played host to Acid Mothers first show in Sheffield, and it was so packed, the floor was literally moving underneath the crowd, the room was like a sauna, every single person dripping with sweat, it was one of the busiest shows I’d been too in Sheffield in a long time. I remember there being some total hippies down the front going so nuts, it was like their dream come true to see Acid Mothers. And, of course, it was INSANELY loud. This release captures that, the sheer volume AMT were playing at for the size of the room was crazy. I remember several months after, a guy I know said he’d heard there was a recording of it, and then a few months from then he said he’d managed to get a hold of it and he’d got a copy for me. After months I managed to get it, it was on DVD as it was too long to fit on a CD, so the guy had said he’d literally said he’d sat in front of the TV and listened to the 80+ minutes staring at a blank screen. That must’ve been a hell of an experience. I managed to get a hold of it in the end, and edit to a perfect 79 minute release just cutting of a few minutes of the encore. This double LP collects those 79 minutes of the recording, 6 tracks including two awesome versions of Pink Lady Lemonade, and other classics like Heart of Earth and Space Disco. The line up for the show was Pika (Afrirampo), Tabata Mitsuru, Hugashi Hiroshi, Shimura Koji, and Kawabata Makoto. Both Pika and Shimura played drums, so the set was seriously heavy as you will find out when you get this spinning… Be warned there are a couple of points in this where the sound goes a little crackly and distorted, but only very, very briefly, and it does get pretty loud at a few points. Just like a true bootleg should be!  Edition of 250 copies on printed card sleeves featuring cover shot of the band. Pressed on 140gram virgin vinyl.

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Kraus – ‘Supreme Commander’ C32 $7AUD
Unhinged In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida and cool Arecibo message from the Wayward Son of melted arena rock and wipe out/freak out goo. Fungal guitar moire and triple-tracked martian riffage time trek into a wriggly medieval manor of fuzz through a retro-futurism that is like nil else. Interstellar mineral insert by Clementine Nixon. Dungeon Taxis 14.

White Saucer/Currer Bells split C24 $7AUD
Pink Air walkers, Stella Corkery and Alan Holt’s beautifully titled and likewise assumed ternary form of glow jams cross Stella’s cymbal loiter, shaker susurration, and fanned out wild flam drags with Alan’s zero zero to total dipper synthesizer fields. Tim Coster and Angeline Chirnside’s Currer Bells side comes through a faraway hinkypunk peal, yielding to a warbled zephyr of healing chime sustain. Recorded in balmy crepuscular rays at Peaking Lights’ Good Style Shop in Madison in 2010 with distortion pedal, cassettes, walkmans, Just Chimes, mixers, delays, thumb piano, looper, Korg DS-10, freeze, harmonicas, guitar, wedding bells, Monotron, phaser. Dungeon Taxis 15.

xNoBBQx – ‘Muryoku Muzenji, Koenji, 2010 / Happy, Wellington, 2009’ C30 $7AUD
Flipped reprisal of that 2009 New Zealand incursion, this live Tokyo/Wellington diptych steps to the mic in unruly, xenolinguistic fashion, it’s squashy ‘drums’ and ‘guitar’ fission the most munchy and hyperventilated of all Matt Earle and Nick Dan’s released programmes. Muryoku Muzenji, Koenji, 2010’s counterpoint creature squall dovetails with rhizomatic kit blare and toothed glissandi in horn-like confusion. Happy, Wellington, 2009 is such an unreal Bolero – like crazy tormenting 4/4s, gamelan detunes, and poltergeist tempo hassle. Dungeon Taxis 16.

Witchuals C40 $7AUD
Chrome hymn zone of nonstop doo-wop detourn by celestial grouches, LA Lakers and I.R.D. Laryngeal juice, fake rataplan, and Kyrie gunk in praise of The Honeycombs, Chordettes and Sharades. Dungeon Taxis 17.

Richard Francis – ‘Acid Songs’ C26 $7AUD
RF’s infra-ordinary sound environment unfolds as a lysergic fugue before dissolving under a burny din of runny hiss, graphed room hum, wibbly sines and crinkled air. Only just sticking within the Goldilocks Zone of its own repurposed crystalline blankness, and ‘dropping the pressure’. Live recordings made between December 2010 – July 2011 in Auckland using oscillators, sine waves, spring reverb, eq filters, delay, noise, microphone, hands, paper, empty spaces, loop maker, computer. Mixed July – September 2011. Dungeon Taxis 18.

Chronox – ‘Gwandalan’ C22 $7AUD
Lacustrine mood service of tidal zonation and depth-sounding outlook music, transcribed from devotional watching sessions at the Coastal Mirage Tabernacle in Lake Maquarie, NSW. Face A surfaces across a GUI island of synthesizer coruscation and littoral splash; B returns as a tritone horizon of heavenly warble and remote Siren exultation. The Melbourne duo had their equipment set up for days, and would rise from the porch every now and then, change something, go back to the porch and stare across the water. Dungeon Taxis 19.

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I Dream in Transit – ‘EXPLOSION’ 7″ $10
B Side is titled: ‘A Drop Of Human Blood On The Surface Of The Moon’. Melbourne based ‘codeine pop’ three piece I DREAM IN TRANSIT are releasing a single (EXPLOSION) on limited edition vinyl. The song is a slow-motion unfolding dream; a news report filtered through a nightmare. in a screen-printed (100% recycled) cardboard sleeve.

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ORFANADO – ‘ITER’ CD
ORFANADO it’s great duo form north Italy. The two musicians come from interesting bands as IN ZAIRE, LAGO MORTO, GIJOE, LETTERA 22 and as Orfanado they are releasing their second album, after the first on Troglosound.The sound of the band is an incredible mix of psychedelia, folk, and prog played with acoustic guitars, sitar, wind instruments, percussions and processed voices for lovers of sun city girls, john fahey, jack rose and a lot of good world music.  It comes out on limited edition 11 tracks CD of 100 copies. Silkscreened digipack. Timeless!

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Science vs. Witchcraft – ‘300 Useful Sound Effects’ C25 $6
At this point 300 Useful Sound Effects stands as the swan song of Rochester, New York’s premier lewd boner rock band, Science vs. Witchcraft.  Captured live to tape at the Bug Jar in 2010, with the band in fine form. This limited edition release features 6 classics from their previous self released eps including Sweatpant Boners, Beautiful Package and Too Big for Pants.

Mold Omen – ‘Blacktop’ C24 $6
Side A of Mold Omen’s Blacktop wastes no time initiating a continuous battle between a heavy, droning maelstrom of noise and the electro-melodies desperately trying to free themselves. By the end, the balance between forces is a serious mantra for the head. As side B begins to creep in, the sonicscape is lo-fi and deliberate. This release from the Baltimore duo has it all.

These Feathers Have Plumes – ‘All Cats are Grey by Night’ C21 $6
Hailing from the fair city of London and with previous releases on Period.Tapes and Tartaruga Records, These Feathers Have Plumes finds Andie Brown expanding upon her original, deep droning compositions for double bass, field recordings and glass. Exploring elements of psychgeography, All Cats Are Grey by Night winds the listener through dark and heavy soundways and into light, haunting beauty.

Novoe Tsarstvo – ‘Voda naidet teply dym C21 $6
This ever-fluctuating group of musicians from Russia (featuring members of Love Cult and the Full of Nothing label) finds themselves in Finland, teaming-up with like-minded musicians. A precursor to a forthcoming single-sided LP on 8mm and a follow up to a self-released cassette, Voda naidet teply dym showcases the breadth of this collective’s sonic force as they explore improvisation by melding jazz tropes and folk melodies.  This double-sided suite documents the group live in Helsinki 01/02/2011.

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V/A ‘DELIRIOUS MUSIC FOR DELIRIOUS PEOPLE‘ CD
The Delirious Insomniac Freeform Radio Show has haunted the airwaves of WLUW into the wee hours of dreary Monday Nights since 2008. Host Arvo Fingers uses his lengthy experience as a sleepless madman to wield surrealistic songs and sounds into a slithering swath for 4 hours a week. Presently, “Delirious Insomniac” is also syndicated on RadioKL.Hr in Croatia, with occasional interviews, virtual guest installations, ghost hosts, and radio art. On September 9th, 2011, Arvo Fingers and WLUW will be celebrating the 4th Anniversary of the Delirious Insomniac Freeform Radio Show as well as the release of the first volume of “Delirious Music For Delirious People”, a compilation featuring Jarboe, Controlled Bleeding, Zola Jesus, Boyd Rice and Friends, Gary Wilson, BeNe GeSSeRiT, Big City Orchestra, Hans Grusel’s Krankenkabinet, and others. At this time, less than 150 copies of the digipaks are available and not spoken for. The pro CDRs will stay in print unless someone happens to want to work with me on a double LP.

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